A mock driving test is £50 here, debrief included. A full-length drive on a real route around the centre your test is booked at, marked to the examiner's fault sheet, with no prompting from your instructor. It measures where you are, and it is worth little until you are close to test standard.
For most of your training somebody sits beside you and helps: a warning before the roundabout, a reminder about the mirror, a route that plays to what you can already do. A mock removes all of it. Your instructor stops teaching for the length of a test, says nothing, and marks what you do on the DVSA fault sheet. Most people find the silence harder than the driving.
We run mocks around the three centres East London learners are sent to: Wanstead, Goodmayes and Chingford. Automatic cars, DVSA-approved ADIs, pick-up anywhere in the 51 areas we cover, 7am to 10pm every day.
What a Mock Test Actually Is
Same shape and length as the real thing, and it starts where the real thing starts: on the roads around your test centre, not the streets you practise on.
- The number plate read, and the show-me tell-me questions before you move
- Normal driving on the centre's own routes, from the ones examiners use
- One reversing manoeuvre, picked on the day rather than agreed in advance
- The emergency stop, on the same odds as the real test
- About twenty minutes of independent driving on a sat-nav or road signs
- Marking on the fault sheet as you drive, not written up afterwards
The drive out from your address is not marked, which matches the real day: you arrive already warmed up. Take a wrong turn in the independent section and nothing is marked for it, exactly as an examiner would not mark it. What is marked is how you drive while lost.
What the £50 Buys
- The full-length drive on a real route around your own centre
- The car and the fuel, including the run out from your pick-up point
- A completed fault sheet you keep
- The debrief, fault by fault, with the sheet in front of you
- An honest verdict: pass or fail, and by how much
One price, nothing per hour on top. The appointment takes about two hours, and it is £50 whichever centre you are booked at. The value argument is short: a mock costs less than the DVSA charges for the real test, and far less than a wasted test once you add the wait for another slot. Cash or bank transfer, as on the prices page.
The Debrief Is Most of What You Are Buying
We park up and go through the sheet in the order the faults happened, because that is the order you remember them in. Each one gets located: which junction, which mirror, what you were doing three seconds before.
The two or three that matter most become practice tasks for your next lesson, because a list you nod at changes nothing. You are also told plainly if you would have passed and which fault ended it, rather than "that was much better".
What the Marked Sheet Tells You
Faults come in three grades. A driving fault is the everyday sort, and you are allowed a limited number before the total alone fails you. A serious fault had the potential to cause danger; a dangerous one caused it. Either ends the test on its own.
The total is the least interesting number on the page. The sheet is there for the pattern. Six of nine faults falling after the thirty-minute mark is a concentration problem, and no amount of manoeuvre practice will touch it. Four faults in the same mirrors box is one habit, and one habit is a single lesson's work.
How It Differs From an Ordinary Lesson
An automatic lesson is £37 an hour and it is teaching: you are meant to improve during it. You will not improve during a mock, and that is the point.
- Nobody helps. No warning before the roundabout, no reminder about the mirror. You find out what you do with no voice beside you.
- It is full length. Faults gather in the last third, which an hour's lesson never reaches. Plenty of pupils drive well for thirty minutes and unravel at forty.
- You do not pick the route. A lesson can quietly avoid the junction you dislike. A test route will not.
When to Book One, and When It Is Too Early
The useful window is a week to ten days out. That leaves room for two or three targeted lessons on whatever the sheet finds, and it is close enough that the rehearsal still feels like the same piece of driving. Three days out, there is no time to fix anything.
Book it for the same time of day as your real slot, and tell us that time, not just the date. The A406 at half eight in the morning and the A406 at half one are two different roads.
You are ready when you have had a lesson where the instructor said almost nothing and you did not notice at the time. Before that, a mock only produces a long sheet.
When Not to Book a Mock
We would rather talk you out of it than take £50 for the wrong thing. A mock is a poor buy if:
- You are still learning the manoeuvres. A mock measures, it does not teach, and the £50 does more as lesson time.
- You have no test date. The route is built around the centre you are booked at, so we would be guessing which to rehearse.
- You had one a fortnight ago and have driven twice since. The second sheet will read like the first.
- You want to be told you are fine. A mock is designed to find faults, and hoping for a clean sheet usually ends badly.
- Your instructor has already told you where you stand and you agree with them.
Two in a row is almost never right: book one, then put the second £50 into the lesson that fixes what it found. An intensive course already includes at least one mock, and if you hold a full licence and want confidence rather than a verdict, refresher hours at £41 suit you better.
The Three Centres, and Why the Route Matters
A mock on the wrong centre's roads is a nice drive and not much else. The three are hard in three different ways, and the fault that ends most tests is a different fault at each one.
Wanstead: multi-lane work on the A12 and the A406
The strongest of the three at 44.4% overall, 42.1% in automatic cars. Manoeuvres go on the quiet grid around Nightingale Lane and rarely cost anyone the test. Charlie Brown's Roundabout, where the A406 meets the A113, and the multi-lane run along Cambridge Park (A12) do: marks go on choosing a lane too late, and on the Cambridge Park bus lanes, which are timed. Routes in full on the Wanstead page.
Goodmayes: box junctions and timed bus lanes on the A118
At 98 Goodmayes Road, Ilford: 43.7% overall, 41.5% in automatic cars. The two faults that end tests here are entering a box junction on the A118 High Road with no exit clear, and drifting into a bus lane inside its hours. Both are marked serious, and neither is a driving skill. See the Goodmayes page.
Chingford: hill starts on Kings Head Hill and Friday Hill
The hardest of the three at 39.9% overall, 38.3% in automatic cars. An automatic takes the clutch out of a hill start, so there is no biting point to find, but the gradient on Friday Hill and Kings Head Hill does not care: rolling back before you move away, and creeping forward while you wait, are both marked. More on the Chingford page.
Mock Tests Across East London
It is £50 everywhere, but the drive is not. Each page below is written around its own area: where we collect you, which centre local pupils are sent to, and the habits those roads build in.
Tower Hamlets & the Docklands: test at Wanstead or Goodmayes
Hackney, Shoreditch & the City Fringe: test at Wanstead
Newham & Stratford: test at Wanstead or Goodmayes
Waltham Forest & Redbridge: test at Wanstead, Chingford or Goodmayes
Barking & South of the River: test at Goodmayes or Wanstead
Redbridge & the Roding Valley: test at Wanstead, Goodmayes or Chingford
Barking, Dagenham & Havering: test at Goodmayes
The areas we cover lists all 41, and the pass first time guide covers test day itself. To book, send your postcode, centre and date on the contact page.
Book a Mock TestReviewed and updated August 2026 by the Wharf Driving School team.